As complimentary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technologies are being scaled down towards nanocritical dimensions, it is expected that the problems relating to fabrication, design complexity and cost will eventually halt further CMOS developments. Industry analysts predict that by the year 2010 the accumulated problems related to the fabrication, design complexity and cost will effectively halt further CMOS developments. Accordingly, there is a need for new (IC) integrated circuit technologies that mitigate or eliminate the limitations of silicon technology.
One area of research has been in the field of conducting organic polymers. The rate of electrochemical reactions is proportional to the surface area of the electrode. The surface area of the electrode is thus very important in a number of well-established areas of conducting polymer research including chemically modified electrodes for biological and chemical sensors and electromechanical actuators.
Improvements in the surface area of conducting polymer electrodes has generally revolved around two methods for preparing electrodes: depositing of a thin layer of conducting polymer films onto thin threads woven into a fabric mesh and template-like polymerization. Template-like polymerization of conducting polymers involves polymerizing the monomer within the pores of a microporous and nanoporous membrane.
Traditionally, the spinning of conducting polymer fibers from solution by conventional wet-spinning techniques results in extruded fibers with a diameter of ≧5 μgm.
Recently, it was shown that polymer fibers of nanometer diameter could be electrospun from sulfuric acid into a coagulation bath (Reneker, D. H. and Chun, I. Nanotechnology 1996 7:216). In these studies more than 20 polymers including polyethylene oxide, nylon, polyimide, DNA, polyaramid and polyaniline were electrospun into electrically charged fibers which were then collected in sheets or other useful geometrical forms.
A method has now been developed for production of ultrafine conductive polymeric fibers from polymer blends such as a polyaniline/polyethylene oxide blend dissolved in organic solvents such as chloroform. As demonstrated herein, polyaniline blend fibers produced via this method exhibit unique characteristics electroactive in nature.